Don Blankenship was head of Massey Energy when 29 coal miners lost their lives in a massive explosion. Forced to resign, he has been largely invisible since. Now he’s filed papers to start another coal mine venture. According to Business Week: Public records show that Blankenship has incorporated a new

While I was in a public space recently, reading Seeds of Change, John Atlas’ new biography about a certain nationwide grassroots movement, I resisted the urge to look around furtively and make sure no one saw the cover of the book. After all, the dreaded word “ACORN” is printed boldly in red.

The attacks on ACORN have been so amplified through the reactionary media that far more people are aware of ACORN via the lens of a pseudo-pimp than by the acres of good works the organization actually has accomplished. When members of the public sees or hears about ACORN, they are more likely to think “corruption” than “people power.” And that’s more than a real shame—it’s a massive loss for millions of America’s low-income people who desperately need the type of empowerment engendered by the ACORN model of organizing.

Lynn Gobbell was fired because her boss didn’t like the John Kerry bumper sticker on her car.

In Colorado, teacher Meg Spohn got the pink slip from DeVry University for complaining about her job on her personal blog.

At Best Lock Company in Indiana, workers are axed for social drinking because the company president believes it’s a sin.
Can Employers do that?

You betcha, writes human rights attorney Lewis Maltby. He’s president and founder of the National Workrights Institute, which he formed after leading the American Civil Liberties Union office on free speech and privacy protection in the corporate world.

Before heading up the Workrights Institute, Maltby had spent time in the corporate world where “learning how to run a productive, profitable company without violating employees’ human rights” became the focus of his life. Right up front in “Can They Do That,” Maltby gets to the crux of the misconception most people have when facing unfair treatment on the job.

There’s a lot more that’s frozen in D.C. this week than the usual fallout from a blizzard. The brains of many Senate Republicans are on ice as well. The House passed a jobs bill in December, but the Senate is dawdling, and worse—threatening to pass bits and pieces, taking apart what should be a comprehensive approach to jobs and turning it into minced cabbage.

The American public knows what most lawmakers in Washington and policymakers around the country have yet to figure out: The nation is losing its middle-class backbone and bifurcating into a have/have not country.

Massachusetts voters sent a strong signal to Washington lawmakers Tuesday that they want results—and aren’t seeing any. Not on health care reform, not on job creation and not on fixing the nation’s economy.

On the 50th anniversary of the Greensboro sit-in, James Parks interviews Franklin McCain, one of the four students who refused to leave a whites-only Greensboro lunch counter until they were served, sparking key civil rights legislation.

The Employee Free Choice Act, perhaps the most bitterly contested bill currently facing the U.S. Congress, would strengthen workers’ right to choose a union and bargain with their employers over issues of wages, benefits and respect on the job. When making the case for this landmark legislation, its supporters often point to the actions of the country’s most aggressively anti-union employers. And there are plenty of good examples to go around.